But it is a threat - who are they going to report parents who don’t want their input to? If a parent tells a HV that they no longer want or need their services then all that should happen is a note be made on their records that family have declined support. Obviously it’s a different scenario if SS are involved or there are existing concerns about a family - I’m talking about your average family.
I found the team down here were useless; they hassled me almost daily by phone before we were even discharged from hospital about coming to the house to do hearing tests when we had no planned discharge date and wouldn’t accept that we didn’t know when we’d be discharged; did not seem to know that premature babies should have their development checks done based on their due date not their actual birth date, so told me there were issues because they didn’t reach their 6 week targets when they should have been 5 days old; that I was told I should not be taking my twins out of the house (despite the neonatal outreach team saying it was absolutely fine so long as I want going to see people who were obviously unwell) and should stay home just in case the HV wanted to come and visit - but they would never give a time when they would come beyond xx day sometime between 9-4 - so they expected us to stay in all day for them to come or worse, another HV would call me either the day before a booked appointment or on the day of an appointment, to change it because the person phoning wanted to come instead of our named HV.
When they did come to the house they would turn up with students without asking if we were happy for them to come; wanted to put their scales on a mat in the porch right by the front door to weigh the babies rather than go through to the kitchen and put the scales on the table or the floor away from unnecessary draughts! They tried telling me that the twins HAD to have a 3-4 month developmental check despite there being no check at that age on the schedule or in the red book.
That was the last straw and I told them to stop bothering us and that we were refusing to engage with their voluntary service any further!! The person we told tried saying she was going to report us for refusing medical care but, when challenged, couldn’t tell me who they were going to report me to or what medical care I was actually refusing - oh, and where we live, the HVs work for the council not health services and can’t arrange medical referrals they just tell you to call the GP surgery if you have any concerns!!
Thankfully for us, they did leave us alone after that and then Covid came along a few months later and HVs stopped all face to face contact; they sent out forms for 2-3 year checks but we put them in the recycling and heard nothing more; since moving to another area 2 1/2 years ago, we’ve not had any contact from the team in this area!